[freen]

In the 50’s (the GOP’s good old days) the top income tax bracket paid 90%+ of every dollar earned above $200k. (Roughly $3m in 2025 dollars)

Billionaires are a policy choice that starves children and stunts economic growth.

[shuckles]

I have a feeling people simply found other ways to be compensated instead of W2 income.

[CamperBob2]

That is, in fact, how it worked. Absolutely no one paid 90% income tax or anything close to it.

Anyone who remembers how the Reagan tax cuts were sold to the public probably remembers that a key component of the campaign was a commitment to close countless tax loopholes.

[freen]

Ah yes, a feeling: even worse than an anecdote.

Yes: they reinvested rather than pocketed revenue.

Anyway, if did the research, you’d see the effective tax rate for the top income earners in US was 40% back then. Substantially higher than it is today.

And that substantially larger portions of revenue were reinvested rather than recognized as profit: high taxes, oddly enough, incentivize investment.

Do the math yourself: $1m in profit, 30% tax rate vs 1% tax rate: which rate incentivizes you to reinvest?